Wednesday, May 23, 2012

OMG: A Facebook Story Just Used the Term "Eyeballs" (FB)

Sooo 1999.
At least they didn't go with "sticky eyeballs".*
From the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column:

Facebook Gets a Buy Rating: It’s ‘An Option on the World’

Facebook is more than a company bet. It is “an option on the World.”

That is how Needham & Co. analysts describe the social networking
giant in initiating coverage on the stock with a buy rating and a $40
price target, above the IPO price and 29% above Tuesday’s close.

The firm sites Facebook’s over 900 million monthly active users for
its lofty description in a generally bullish note that predicts Facebook
will eventually pass Google in revenue.

“The best question for FB is how to value it,” Needham writes. “Our
point of view is that FB should be valued based on revenue potential
from total minutes spent on FB times its powerful margin expansion
engine.”

The analysts say that “money follows time” and since Facebook
commands a major Internet presence of eyeballs, and it has seen margins
expand rapidly, Facebook is likely to generate huge amounts of revenue.

Needham forecasts revenue this year of $5.04 billion and next year of
$6.53 billion after Facebook brought in $3.71 billion in 2011....MORE

*From IT World Canada 15 Jul 1999:

Here’s mud in your ‘sticky eyeballs’

Sticky eyeballs, I always thought, were those rubbery, bloodshot
spheres that young boys throw at one another for the "eewww"
effect. Thrown right, the blobs sometimes even stick to a window,
prolonging any pre-adolescent smirks.

But now, for reasons
unbeknownst to me, someone in the Web marketing world has purloined
the adjective "sticky" and attached it to "eyeballs" and decided the
resulting phrase means people who spend a bunch of time on a Web
site....MORE